Population aging redefines the economic growth-carbon emissions nexus, energy consumption-carbon emissions nexus - Evidence from 36 OECD countries

This work aims to analyze the impact of population aging on the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions, and the relationship between energy consumption and carbon emissions. To this end, based on the panel data of 36 OECD countries from 1996 to 2016, the panel threshold regression model was developed. In the model, per capita carbon emissions are the explained variables, economic development (per capita GDP) and per capita energy consumption are the core explanatory variables of the two models respectively, population aging is the threshold variable, population size, technological innovation level, the degree of urbanization, industrial structure and energy intensity are control variables. The empirical results show that there is a population aging threshold effect between per capita GDP and per capita carbon emissions, and between per capita energy consumption and per capita carbon emissions. This means that population aging is an important factor that affects the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions, as well as energy consumption and carbon emissions. Although economic growth and carbon emissions, energy consumption and carbon emissions were coupled, the coupling state decline when the population aging crosses the threshold value. This indicates that the population aging contributes to the decoupling of the economic growth and carbon emissions, and the decoupling of energy consumption and carbon emissions. Finally, on the basis of the proposed model, a robust analysis of the variable of trade openness was conducted to prove the validity of this research.